Earlier than I get an opportunity to ask about his entrepreneurship methods, or his quite a few bestselling books and even the nonprofit work that’s meant to be the main focus of our dialog at this time, Mike Koenigs has a complete string of questions for me.
“Would you like me to report this?” he needs to know. “I can do it in a number of methods, together with a full transcript and the whole lot else. And would you want high-quality video as properly?”
By the point I ask Koenigs a single query about his work with startups or the fundraising he’s finished for the Just Like My Child Foundation, he’s despatched me a personal YouTube hyperlink to a 4K video of our Zoom dialog, a real-time transcript through Otter.ai and a handful of different property I gained’t even have time to dig into till after we grasp up. “Full nerd assault, whether or not you prefer it or not,” he chuckles.
It looks like Koenigs in a nutshell: energetic, enthusiastic and very useful, utilizing the entire cutting-edge technology he’s mastered over the course of his profession to make everybody’s life just a little simpler. He has the tools to succeed; he needs to be sure you have them. He needs us all to.
Who’s Mike Koenigs?
Koenigs is an immensely pushed man. Often called “the Superpower Accelerator,” his days are spent serving to companies and people reinvent themselves to be the very best model they are often. Mainly, he says, “We construct complete manufacturers in per week.
“We meet with founders, and we are going to invent the model—we’ll do the packaging, positioning, messaging, content material, movies, the supply—and have it prepared so you can begin promoting one thing inside days,” he continues. “And we do round 20 of these a 12 months. We’ve finished over 100 since I began doing this.”
Simply Like My Little one Basis
However Koenigs’ penchant for entrepreneurship is rivaled by his charitable work, particularly with the Simply Like My Little one Basis. Based by Koenigs’ spouse, Vivian, in 2006, Simply Like My Little one has delivered applications in well being care providers, training, microenterprise, social justice, management and empowerment to greater than 200,000 folks in rural communities of central Uganda and Senegal. (The work is a household affair: For his bar mitzvah, Koenigs’ son Zak raised sufficient cash to construct a library in Uganda.) Their main focus is on supporting girls and younger women; the thought is that specializing in adolescent women can impact generational change in these communities.
“To me, now we have a social accountability, not simply to our personal communities however to the world, to maintain younger women protected,” Koenigs says. He believes that to interrupt the cycle of poverty, younger women must be educated—each in class and in realizing their rights—and saved out of hurt’s manner, so that they’re not solely empowered, but in addition totally able to making their very own selections on whether or not to get married or have kids.
Up to now, the group has constructed seven faculty buildings and reworked the Bishop Asili Hospital in Uganda’s Luweero District from a struggling well being clinic to a state-of-the-art medical facility—full with an working room and dental heart. That may be spectacular sufficient by itself, besides it’s not all Simply Like My Little one does. Koenigs is particularly happy with Just Like My Child’s Girl Power Project®, a program designed to maintain women in class and educate them about their our bodies, stopping unplanned pregnancies and compelled baby marriage. It’s a self-replicating curriculum, taught in easy, easy language that may empower younger girls and actually change lives.
Mike Koenigs needs to democratize expertise
In the whole lot he does—with private {and professional} improvement, with Simply Like My Little one, and with Wealth Longevity International, the early detection well being care firm he based after surviving stage 3 most cancers in 2012—Koenigs makes use of the identical expertise that’s change into basic to him in a enterprise software sense. “I’ve a view that the democratization of expertise goes to convey much more wealth and abundance to the world,” he says. “And I additionally consider that entrepreneurship is a global language of peace and abundance.”
As AI services change into each extra highly effective and extra accessible, Koenigs has a imaginative and prescient of bringing these instruments and the mindset of integrative different medication to creating nations, “the place not solely do they not have the mindsets, they don’t have the instruments and the assets,” he explains. He references a program known as DoctorGPT, which might really move the US Medical Licensing Examination—what if everybody, in each neighborhood, had a device like that, letting them take actual possession over their medical care?
To be clear, Koenigs doesn’t see himself among the many “unrealistic entrepreneurs” or “big-hearted givers,” the individuals who—well-meaning as they could be—don’t have a scalable, cost-effective plan to empower the underserved.
“I believe handouts breed resentment and entitlement,” he notes. “Abruptly, you suppose that someway you deserve one thing that you simply didn’t earn. That isn’t to say I don’t consider in social accountability. However I believe an entrepreneurial mindset is wholesome as a result of, once more, it’s centered on offering worth.”
Mike Koenigs is right here to assist
Earlier than we are saying our goodbyes, Koenigs has just a few extra provides of assist. He’ll ship over a current webinar he did with Tony Robbins (“there’s nice instruments in there”), and he’s joyful to provide away copies of his books (“I believe it helps you dream larger and higher”). Amongst his bestsellers is one known as Referral Party, which helps construct a referral enterprise; one other one, Punch the Elephant, covers the tough matter of promoting extra successfully. “Punching the elephant within the room as quickly as you stroll in, mainly,” he chuckles.
What he actually needs is for folks to have the ability—and the instruments—to make nice modifications of their lives, whether or not that’s via one among his talking engagements, via working with him immediately or via any one among his books.
“Essentially the most profitable individuals are great storytellers,” he smiles. “Essentially the most profitable leaders are nice storytellers. You’ve gotta encourage to maneuver mountains.”
This text initially appeared in January/February 2024 problem of SUCCESS Journal. Picture courtesy of Simply Like My Little one Basis.